12 Items Made More Awesome With Rockets

How to perfect anything: Put a rocket on it

Think of something awesome. Like a go-kart or a hot rod. Now think of something that would make it cooler. The answer is, a rocket. A car is insufficiently fast? With a rocket, it can break the sound barrier. A Christmas tree won't throw itself away? Send it up into the air.

Let's face it: rockets are awesome. Here are some of the best things ever improved with just a simple rocket.

A train

No joke: rocket engines are tested on train tracks at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico. To test the thrust of a rocket, NASA and the military put it on a sled car and set it off, where the rocket-powered car can hit speeds up to Mach 10, or 7,612 mph. The 9.6-mile test track has been in operation since the 1950s.

Placing a rocket on the monorail system allows researchers to determine the thrust of an engine and other qualities associated with a launch system. It's a great way to make sure a rocket is safe before sending it into the air, where it could cause more damage if something goes wrong.

This go-kart

Colin Furze knows a thing or two about incredibly dangerous DIY inventions, but perhaps the coolest so far is his rocket powered go-kart, which can hit speeds of 60 mph and look super badass while doing so. It's such a simple idea, and the sort of thing a six year old dreams of, with the go-kart being the first thing many children step behind the wheels of.

This is a grown up manifestation of those dreams, a fire breathing demon of a go kart that no children should actually ride. It's not designed for the slick track, but rather long stretches of road. We would, however, recommend a helmet and a visor should you decide to do this at home, which maybe you should leave up to the professionals.

A bicycle

Most bicycle riders, unless they're rolling down a particularly good hill, cruise along at about 10 mph. Faster ones might reach to up 25 mph, and pros could go 35. But if you want to go more than 200 mph on your bicycle, you've just got to stop wasting your life and put a rocket engine on it, like Francois Gissy did.

A snowboard

The X-Games just aren't extreme enough. Where are the ballistics? Where's the fire? Jude Gomila isn't going to take it, which is why he 3D-printed a rocket engine for his snowboard.

In comparison to the go-kart or the bicycle, the results are surprisingly sedate, or as sedate as a snowboard can be with a jet engine strapped to the back. The snowboard creates about 22 lbs of thrust for the snowboard.

The (toy) Batmobile

When it comes to cool, few fictional characters can match the Batman. And while a rocket-powered Batmobile was a staple of the TV shows and movies, no Batmobile toy from your childhood came installed a rocket on it. That's ok, though. Mr. Spencer Prime has you covered in this YouTube clip.

Oh also, this is Bruce Wayne we're talking about, so the comic books have of course already had a Batrocket, though it didn't debut until 2006, which is surprisingly recent given that Batman is a 76 year old cartoon character. He probably just took Boomtubes the infrequent times he did go to space in the comics.

Rocket planes

But it wasn't the last rocket plane. The X-15 would follow in the late 50s, and reached the upper limits of our atmosphere (or the lower limits of suborbital space) numerous times between 1962 and 1968, including two flights by Joseph A. Walker that topped the generally accepted boundary of space at 62 miles above the Earth (the Air Force defines space as 50 miles and above, while NASA generally says 62 is where it starts.) It continues on up to SpaceShipOne, the first private craft to reach suborbital space.

Rocket cars

The Bloodhound SSC isn't road ready. Yet. But sometime this year, it will launch on test runs in South Africa with the goal of hitting 1,000 mph and blowing away the land speed record. True to form, it looks more like a rocket than car.

Of course, it's not the first rocket car. We've had them going back to 1928. But when it zips across the desert, it will certainly be the fastest out there.

Roller blades

Roller blading has fallen out of favor since the mid 90s, and it totally had it coming. But maybe the way to give inline skates a full-scale revival is to put rockets on roller blades and then hit the streets.

Of course, it could end up being a death trap. After all, expert scientist Wile E. Coyote already tried this in his Sisyphean quest to capture the elusive Road Runner, a symbol of man's foolhardy quest to defeat nature with increasingly sophisticated weaponry it only half understands.

This Maddox motorcycle

Maddox Jets made its name by throwing a rocket onto anything it can, and this blazin' fast motorcycle is no exception. Evel Knievel would be proud. There's something so ... primal about attaching a rocket to a machine already designed to do go dangerously fast. As far as creating danger-seeking synergy, there's no greater intersection than rockets and motorcycles. Except maybe jet packs.

This Christmas tree

Next January, you can curb your Christmas tree and wait for the city to pick it up ... or you can strap a rocket to it and send it off in style.

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